It has been awhile since I have shared some tools that I have been using for my church’s media and social media platforms. One reason for that is that I had become a bit stagnant in the resources I was using. I kept returning to the tired and true. Another reason is that I don’t like posting about something I don’t actually know and use. That being said, over the next few weeks I will be posting about websites and programs I have been using more recently that I believe can help you and your church.
Today I will start with the website that has become one of my go-to’s when it comes to graphics, it is called Church Motion Graphics. I don’t know how I existed as long as I have in the space that I am in without using this website. They have almost everything you will ever need for church graphics: moving backgrounds, countdowns, motion titles, still backgrounds, sermon & announcement templates, social graphics and more. They even have this amazing feature called TempoMatch where you type in the title of your praise or worship song and it matches you with a moving background that would suit the tempo of your song! A friend of mine actually did a video tutorial of all that you can do with backgrounds in CMG.
The content that has been life-changing for me is their social media options. They have designs for every type of post you can think of – inspirational, interactive, announcements, invites, scriptures and even stories. And the amazing thing about this website is that for every image design they give you the ability to download the original photoshop file so you can edit it to fit your church! I know very little about photoshop and with my cursory knowledge I was able to take the original design and turn it into one that I used for the UPCA social media pages.
Clearly their design is better but I was able to use an image taken with a mobile phone and turn it into an original looking design that communicates an eternity-changing message. I have even been able to garner compliments from our church’s graphic artist who creates most of our original social media content (Don’t worry, I came clean).
The original photoshop files are available on all the announcement & sermon image templates as well which will help you freshen up some of your reused announcement images – we all do it.
Another cool thing about this site is that they are constantly churning out new content for you to use, so you don’t have to worry about working your way through all their designs.
Now here comes the part that may lose some of you – it’s not super cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it is extremely affordable when you factor in everything that you will be able to do with a premium subscription and how much that would normally cost you if you paid a graphic artist to create it for you. With that being said, a yearly pack that includes everything I just wrote about is $309 USD and you can renew it every 12 months at just $199 USD. They do have other options that you are able to choose from but I would definitely recommend a premium subscription.
I encourage you to at least check out the site because they do have free images that you can download and use for your church. I hope that was helpful. Next week I will be talking about the new church management system we started using at the POS this year.
Looking forward to your next post.